Stop panicking. You're fine - rumours about a redesigned MP have been circulating for several months. Don't forget that Steve Jobs also owns a little company called Pixar whose artists need 128 GB of RAM to render their projects. Great as they are, a MPB will never do that.

Steve Jobs owned Pixar over ten years ago before he made it a public company. Then the shareholders owned it. He WAS ceo and did sell Pixar to Disney.

I'd like to change the conversation to Apples business direction on FCP.

But first of all, I would like to say that I feel bad for the Pro Editors who have/will lose time, money and faith in a Brand that they respected.
Apple for tarnishing their image of finally becoming a World Wide Tec Leader after all these years of being second to Microsoft.
This should have not happened.

Why did Apple make these dramatic change without consulting with the pro's? Financial or a False Sense of futuristic Leadership?
OR
Do they feel that the amount of people who are professionals who invest in FCP does not pay for the creation of such a product? How many pro's buy FCP? How many Pro-sumers buy this product?
Why has Avid and Premier not invested in their products? Maybe the market size does not make financial sense? ( see my comment below )
If Apple determined it's not worth investing in a Pro-line of FCP Software, then why build Pro Mac's or move towards a fast line such as Thunderbolt?

Now my feelings...
Even if a brand has small minority of Pro's worldwide using their products, it only makes sense to invest in them because the publicity for their brand gets the highness level of PR.
i.e. Why does Firestone make special tires for race cars?

So Apple, wake up... this is a good place to invest some of those Billions in the bank.
Keep a Pro Product like FCP alive and have another for majority of us dummies.

They don't do full render on Macs, they have dedicated hardware for that. The artists do use Macs for animating.

I've heard the rendering, even on incredible, dedicated hardware, takes a long time for each frame. It's amazing. The new Cars supposedly has even more detail, so either longer render times or a bigger render farm... or two..

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

Stop panicking. You're fine - rumours about a redesigned MP have been circulating for several months. Don't forget that Steve Jobs also owns a little company called Pixar whose artists need 128 GB of RAM to render their projects. Great as they are, a MPB will never do that.

Its too bad that posters don't bother to get their facts straight. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney. He no longer owns it.

As far as Pixar render farms, "There were few contacts on Pixar's site, which isn't surprising, being a Steve Jobs-founded company now owned by another fairly secretive corporation, Disney. And information on the Web was hard, at least for me, to initially find, though I was able to confirm that Pixar and most other major animation studios had moved from Unix-based render farms to Linux ones about 5 years ago. (Check out Linuxmovies.org for even more information on this topic.)"

Has any rumor surfaced yet as to the future of the MacPro? I had a thought last night, maybe this all foreshadows Apple dropping the high end hardware while making MacBook Pros ever more powerful and migrating pro apps to the prosumer variety. It make sense looking at the sales numbers, and look at XServe!

As a Mac Desk top owner since they first existed it is a scary thought personally but as a share holder I could see the logic. I admit I now use a MacBook Pro i7 and iPad 2 a hell of a lot of the time though. Apple could abandon the high end altogether, leaving that small market to PCs and Adobe.

Tell me I am just having nightmares.

Interesting point - I haven't seen one in a mac store for a very long time. I totally sympathise with all the video editors out there, this kind of stuff would drive me mad in audio. Oh wait it did but it was tc electronic not apple. They should offer full support for the old one and the possibility to buy more licenses until they can make the new one acceptable. What a cock up...

As far as the lack of full tape support, who cares? This is Apple making a shot across the bow to all of the outfits out there that are stuck in 1999. Most people are shooting tapeless, or will be in the near future. Why should we have to worry about having to go back out to tape because some TV station still likes a Betacam tape? Maybe the stations should upgrade instead of the myriad producers of small content have to keep unreliable mechanical crap around just for them? Tape died four or five years ago, some people just refused to read the obituary.

What about the millions of miles of videotape on the shelves that need to be migrated to digital files? Suppose these need to be color corrected, audio mixed, edited and upconverted? Do you tell your client that you will not output to a tape protection copy because you no longer want to "keep unreliable mechanical crap around just for them?"

I'd like to change the conversation to Apples business direction on FCP.

But first of all, I would like to say that I feel bad for the Pro Editors who have/will lose time, money and faith in a Brand that they respected.
Apple for tarnishing their image of finally becoming a World Wide Tec Leader after all these years of being second to Microsoft.
This should have not happened.

Why did Apple make these dramatic change without consulting with the pro's? Financial or a False Sense of futuristic Leadership?
OR
Do they feel that the amount of people who are professionals who invest in FCP does not pay for the creation of such a product? How many pro's buy FCP? How many Pro-sumers buy this product?
Why has Avid and Premier not invested in their products? Maybe the market size does not make financial sense? ( see my comment below )
If Apple determined it's not worth investing in a Pro-line of FCP Software, then why build Pro Mac's or move towards a fast line such as Thunderbolt?

Now my feelings...
Even if a brand has small minority of Pro's worldwide using their products, it only makes sense to invest in them because the publicity for their brand gets the highness level of PR.
i.e. Why does Firestone make special tires for race cars?

So Apple, wake up... this is a good place to invest some of those Billions in the bank.
Keep a Pro Product like FCP alive and have another for majority of us dummies.

A Pro-sumer... Old retired Mac Guy

I have a horrible feeling the pro market isn't big enough for apple's interest anymore and they are prepared to lose a significant proportion to gain loads of prosumers. Pretty sad state of affairs really but sound business sense to me... Hope this isn't true, pretty shocked but the import thing myself...

Over the past week since this all this started, the news has made me one of the unhappy video editors, however, I don't really think it is a miscalculation on Apple's part. They knew what was going to happen, which is why they wanted to conceal the known issues until the last minute. They didn't want to have it dragged through the mud for months. They wanted all the bitching and complaining to be over and done with in a week's time and then we all move on.

Maybe it is a good thing to have a powerful yet stripped down editing app. If you look at any Apple produced video or commercial, you don't see many fancy special effects, except some of those older iTunes animated ads. Their stuff is clean straight cuts, simple titling and conservative audio mixing. Should that be the new direction for video? Less is more, you know?

Perhaps next Google will come out with Viddy for Chrome. Then we can edit our movies over the Internet. That should make FCP X look totally professional by comparison.

The problem with Apple software, pro and home, is that it now has a confirmed reputation of becoming obsolete in a relatively sort time and without warning. The same goes for its pro hardware like the Mac Servers and the Apple RAID.

Professionals will now need even more ammunition to why their employer should spend the extra dough to purchase Mac Pros and use software that can become obsolete overnight.

Import
Can I import projects from Final Cut Pro 7 into Final Cut Pro X?

Final Cut Pro X includes an all-new project architecture structured around a trackless timeline and connected clips. In addition, Final Cut Pro X features new and redesigned audio effects, video effects, and color grading tools. Because of these changes, there is no way to “translate” or bring in old projects without changing or losing data. But if you’re already working with Final Cut Pro 7, you can continue to do so after installing Final Cut Pro X, and Final Cut Pro 7 will work with Mac OS X Lion. You can also import your media files from previous versions into Final Cut Pro X.

Based on limited FCPX experience and tutorials the highlighted text is true... as far as it goes.

But I think that with a "best effort" attempt Apple could provide a separate migration tool that took an FCP7 project and created a corresponding FCPX project:

-- The media from FCP7 could be copied (or optionally pointed to) and used to create equivalent events
-- Missing FCP7 organizational constructs such as bins and multi-sequence-projects could be handled with FCPX collections and naming conventions: ProjA,Seq1,Seq2 become ProjA-Seq1, ProjA-Seq2...
-- I believe the FCPX storyline construct could provide a reasonable approximation of the multiple track construct of an FCP7 sequence (FCPX doesn't have multiple tracks, but clips can be positioned above and below the storyline)
-- The clips in FCPX would maintain the same length and juxtaposition as the original FCP7 sequence.
-- Clips without equivalent FCPX effects could be tagged with an FCPX "To Do" marker to indicate what has been abandoned and what needs to be done done, e.g. "Missing XYZfx Karaoke Bouncing Ball effect".

With a migration tool, as described above, Apple could do the necessary grunt work/heavy lifting to move a legacy FCP7 project to FCPX.

As the robustness of FCPX grows the migration tool could be expanded to accomplish a more complete migration -- New 3rd-party FCPX effects could be applied with the same parameters as their FCP7 equivalents.

I assume that Apple must provide this tool, because I don't believe Apple has supplied a programmatic way for 3rd-parties to generate FCPX projects and position clips in the storyline (and other positions above and below).

Done properly, I believe that this would provide a level of comfort to pros with many legacy FCP7/FCS projects -- it gives them a path forward migrate legacy projects to the new technology as and when needed.

"Swift generally gets you to the right way much quicker." - auxio -

"The perfect [birth]day -- A little playtime, a good poop, and a long nap." - Tomato Greeting Cards -

Simple question, because you post in a reasoned fashion and appear to be a pro in post.

Do any competitive products have the capability to:

1) Open an FCP7/FCS * project

* I include FCS so that the FCP projects that round-trip to other FCS components are covered.

or

2) Provide a migration tool to move an FCP7/FCS project to their product(s) -- realizing that there may be differences that require a "best effort" migration.

Or, does migration of an FCP7/FCS project to a competitive system involve manual re-creation (not recreation of the project in the new system on a "best effort" basis?

I'm pretty much retired now so keep up out of academic interest. I maintain a FCP7 edit suite for local HD projects I shoot myself these day but gone are the days I was editing freelance for ESPN shows etc. ... TG!

I am actually playing with X too and love it but I do consultancy for companies still with many seats editing in FCPro 7 so I feel their anguish at the dilemma they are in.

As to migration. Yes, Premiere Pro can for the most part. Many edit houses also have Avid and Premiere Pro stations too, it is an industry which embraces high end technologies and they want to keep their fingers in as many options as possible. So many I suspect could move over to Premiere Pro (on PCs sadly in my experience) for example and use EDLs and XML to convert but the truth is most love their Macs and OS X and really want to see this worked out I am sure. Some migration info here ...http://help.adobe.com/en_US/premiere...47be-8000.html

I think this will all work out if Apple maintain the ability to add a seat with 7 when needed for a while longer and bring the pros in to give feed back on brining X up to speed. Once X is up to speed I am sure it will be faster and better.

I also suspect some bright spark will figure out a way to convert projects.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

I'm pretty much retired now so keep up out of academic interest. I maintain a FCP7 edit suite for local HD projects I shoot myself these day but gone are the days I was editing freelance for ESPN shows etc. ... TG!

I am actually playing with X too and love it but I do consultancy for companies still with many seats editing in FCPro 7 so I feel their anguish at the dilemma they are in.

As to migration. Yes, Premiere Pro can for the most part. Many edit houses also have Avid and Premiere Pro stations too, it is an industry which embraces high end technologies and they want to keep their fingers in as many options as possible. So many I suspect could move over to Premiere Pro (on PCs sadly in my experience) for example and use EDLs and XML to convert but the truth is most love their Macs and OS X and really want to see this worked out I am sure.

I think this will all work out if Apple maintain the ability to add a seat with 7 when needed for a while longer and bring the pros in to give feed back on brining X up to speed. Once X is up to speed I am sure it will be faster and better.

I also suspect some bright spark will figure out a way to convert projects.

OK! There is a path forward for FCP7/FCS users -- Use Premiere Pro.

This doesn't make me very happy as an Apple fan and shareholder.

I have some stuff to do today, but this weekend I will try and assess if there is any published programmatic way to create an FCPX project.

If there is, then anyone could write a migration tool. If not, Apple will have to write one or publish an SDK.

"Swift generally gets you to the right way much quicker." - auxio -

"The perfect [birth]day -- A little playtime, a good poop, and a long nap." - Tomato Greeting Cards -

Its too bad that posters don't bother to get their facts straight. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney. He no longer owns it.

Yep Jobs doesn't own Pixar anymore because he sold it to Disney for shares in Disney stock. So now he's the biggest single shareholder of Disney and sits in Disney's board. Does that mean that he does/doesn't give a sh*t anymore about what goes on in Pixar?

As far as the lack of full tape support, who cares? This is Apple making a shot across the bow to all of the outfits out there that are stuck in 1999. Most people are shooting tapeless, or will be in the near future. Why should we have to worry about having to go back out to tape because some TV station still likes a Betacam tape? Maybe the stations should upgrade instead of the myriad producers of small content have to keep unreliable mechanical crap around just for them? Tape died four or five years ago, some people just refused to read the obituary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Park Seward

What about the millions of miles of videotape on the shelves that need to be migrated to digital files? Suppose these need to be color corrected, audio mixed, edited and upconverted? Do you tell your client that you will not output to a tape protection copy because you no longer want to "keep unreliable mechanical crap around just for them?"

I'd love to have the OP as a competitor.

Everyone I know in the industry is aware tape is dying. teejaysplace24 must not run a business or he would know that things don't change overnight or over years. The funny thing is, it's your customers who decide how you are going to work. If an agency wants to do a $200k job with you and demands tape at every stage of the process - you say yes. So Teejay you go ahead keep making bombastic statements about people being stuck in 1999 or or not reading the obituary. People will stop listening to you, if they haven't already.

BTW we have not purchased a new tape deck in many, many years. In fact I have sold a number of them on Ebay. A guy in Canada bought our pro Hi8 deck

Yes I too would hate to see this go that way, especially to Adobe LOL. You could be rich if you create a utility from 7 to X

That's a pretty good list!

Well... Shit, Oh Dear...

I just watched the video that demonstrates conversion from FCP to Premiere and back.

As I posted earlier I believe Apple could provide a similar migration tool.

With what I know about FCPX it could handle the import of an FCP7 sequence equally as well as Premiere.

For now, some of the effects in FCPX may be missing -- but that should change quickly (there is quite a bit of activity on the <pro-apps-dev@lists.apple.com> mailing lists).

If that's all it takes then Apple will be remiss [crazy] if they don't supply (or let a 3rd-party supply) a migration tool -- "all-new project architecture structured around a trackless timeline"... shmimeline, Indeed!

"Swift generally gets you to the right way much quicker." - auxio -

"The perfect [birth]day -- A little playtime, a good poop, and a long nap." - Tomato Greeting Cards -

I think that people are wasting their time signing any petition. Apple knows fully well what it is doing and I'm sure they were aware of some backlash coming. They made their strategic decision and I doubt that they will budge.

Nature, the free market and capitalism will solve any problems. Those people who don't like the new Final Cut Pro X or find it unusable will migrate towards something else and those people who like the new Final Cut Pro X will use it.

I'm don't really do video, I'm more into music. If Apple comes out with a new Logic that is completely different, I will simply have to choose if I will continue using it or if I will move to something else. If a new Logic version ends up looking more like Garageband and it is targeted more towards talentless people uploading their crappy, amateurish music on youtube, then I will probably move to something else.

Is the 4 Gig process address limit a massive problem in FCP7? I don't think that this response is based primarily on an imminent problem that pro users will suffer, so much as an emotional sense of betrayal by Apple.

Video and photography pros have a visceral disdain for the prosumer market that isn't necessarily shared by pros in other industries.

Don't be a fag - how about faster processing - you know the 4gb limit is not the only thing.

This, from the Macworld review, is all you need to know... and why at some point in the future Avid and Adobe will have to rewrite their software, or get left in the dust by Apple again.

Quote:

Performance

Without exception, FCP X is the fastest NLE I have edited on without the assistance of dedicated hardware. That performance gain comes from the programs native 64-bit toolset and the operating systems Grand Central Dispatch, which harnesses power from the GPU processing as well as the multicore CPU.

This 64-bit architecture lets FCP X access every byte of RAM, execute true multi-processing across all CPU cores, and unlock GPU-based graphics processing. Because FCP X processing is scalable, its always using the maximum power available to your computer, whether it be a MacBook Pro or a Mac Pro tower. Final Cut Pro X finally utilizes every CPU and GPU cycle to accelerate background processes.

I can't and wont comment on the state of the art at Avid, but they do seem to be a bit more expensive, and YES... do cater to the traditional tape crowd, as well as a broadcast workflow.

So what's the belly-aching about? Get out your checkbooks and "upgrade" to an Avid station.

Moving to Adobe Premier Pro... well I have some experience with Adobe products... a lot actually.

1) Adobe can't even program a simple thing like a Flash plug-in that doesn't suck... for the last 4 years!

2) Photoshop has 64-bit bolted on, as well as other niceties, in that portions of it's interface are built with Flash and AIR. You read it right, not full native frameworks.

3) The CS series STILL does not have a unified interface, and many tools, while they make look the same across programs, actually function differently. I can't verify that statement within their video apps, but print production and web is a holy mess!

4) Eventually, all of the legacy code created by Macromedia, and then "maintained" by Adobe, has to go and be stripped out. That means a rewrite, if you're going to do it right. Does Adobe have the balls to do it? When? And when/if they do, will it be bug free? I doubt it if the release of 64-bit Photoshop was anything to go by. Open-GL took a while to get right (around 18 months really), and they also killed a number of "pro" filters with the first release, like Liquid... which also came back working after about a 5-6 month period.

There is no way around it. Moving into the future with modern hardware capabilities and frameworks, needs a full rewrite apparently. Anything less and your stuck in legacy, which fewer and fewer businesses are willing to pay or upgrade for. Witness the "mey" comments to Office and PS CS5.5.

Face it. It's a dead end.

OBTW: if the "pro editors" want a hint of what's to come sooner than later to their area of expertise within the movie-making biz... you might all want to read up on the studios building mega VFX effects farms in exotic locals such as Singapore, India, and throughout Asia. VFX artists and indy houses have been hosed well before you, and not due to Apple or the software industry.

Y'all might want to hook up some time and trade notes of doom. Sorry 'bout that too. Sincerely.

Knowing what you are talking about would help you understand why you are so wrong. By "Realistic" - AI Forum Member

And why didn't the pros just said, not ready yet, nothing to see here, move along?

I'm worried about the judgment of supposedly professional editors who didn't realize what's in this FAQ on their own. FCP7 is done. You can still use it, and Apple should guarantee support for X years, until the FCPX transition is done.

When Apple threw everything and started from scratch, it's a moment of vulnerability. Avid and Adobe will definitely make a play for the market. This is the risk of such a new piece of software.

There's sometimes a tone to the "professional editors object" tirades that makes me think some of them just don't like what many call "iMovie Pro" in a derisive way because it makes some things too easy, and makes a whole bunch of lumpen think they can be editors too, and that is something no Guild likes.

My perspective on that is, the revolution is going on whether you get to edit a new series about the Kardashians or not. Web streaming video, file video, is the new reality. Broadcast TV, cable, and all the reasons that industry was once a 'license to print money,' are a stale industry.

As far as the lack of full tape support, who cares? This is Apple making a shot across the bow to all of the outfits out there that are stuck in 1999. Most people are shooting tapeless, or will be in the near future. Why should we have to worry about having to go back out to tape because some TV station still likes a Betacam tape? Maybe the stations should upgrade instead of the myriad producers of small content have to keep unreliable mechanical crap around just for them? Tape died four or five years ago, some people just refused to read the obituary.

There are acquisition formats and delivery formats. Tapeless acquisition has nothing to do with delivery. Stations? Forget those Luddites. How about networks, distribution companies, and middlemen? Take a look at the list of deliverables for foreign market distribution, or a series on A&E, Discovery, History Channel, etc. There's a TON of production for cable that isn't delivered by FTP or shipping a hard drive, and it's being handled all over the country.

... I admit that I have yet to use Final Cut Pro X -- and I'm kind of underwhelmed by what it is doing now.

It's clear this is not a finished product, but Apple probably decided they had to "ship it and fix it' because waiting another 6 months would be worse for keeping market share than a rough transition. Though that's debatable.

I figure that Lion, is going to change a lot for the company, and parts of FCPX could not be made ready, because Lion was not ready to build them on. Things like a file system and streaming come to mind -- Multicam was certainly not forgotten, but I'm guessing when it appears, it will be revolutionary. It's a matter of spending 6 months on a stop-gap rig, versus a year to do it right.

What I think they are moving to, is more and more "in graphic card" manipulations, and multi-core support, and file systems that "don't care where the file is" -- ZPS seems "sort of" the future on file systems, but it could be improved.

The REAL Final Cut Pro X, will probably rely totally on Lion for it's real glory, and on Thunderbolt to shine -- Apple is clearly going to an all-digital, all-streaming, all-realtime platform. It's just a matter of "when." There are at least 3 totally new platforms in the works here.

Final Cut Pro X is going to have some real growing pains -- so for pros, they REALLY are going to have to stay with FCP7 for bread and butter or move to a different platform. In a year, however, I think that FCPX will be "on track for the future" and Adobe and Avid will be playing catchup.

>> The LACK of FCP7 Import is crazy. I'd take merely a "cuts and edit timeline" -- you know, maybe the first two tracks in and out points sans effects and such,... and then saying they have no plans for it? That's kind of a transition killer. What Apple is really saying is; "FCPX is a NEW product with the same name as the old one."

My guess is that they are counting on third Parties like Automatic Duck to do it right because they don't have the time and resources, but Apple can not make future promises for a company. The "we will not be pursuing it" part -- might only make sense in that Automatic Duck isn't going to bother with such a plugin/app if Apple is going to do it anyway in a year. So, figuring that Apple is not crazy, but doesn't want a Lawsuit -- I'd estimate that a third party will have a product for converting files to import -- I mean, if they are going to have an XML format -- they will eventually be able to convert to and from almost ANYTHING.

So, it's probably also that "XML format" issue as well. And, I can imagine that Apple is going to have that XML format, do double-duty with other applications and be web-page accessible.

>> It's a bitter pill for Apple to swallow, but I think they are taking the heat now and laying the groundwork for something really great.... I'm going to get FCPX myself in a few months ... but If I were a big shop, I'd have to ask the question; "Can I wait for a year and a half for the new architecture to fill my needs?"

I'm worried about the judgment of supposedly professional editors who didn't realize what's in this FAQ on their own. FCP7 is done. You can still use it, and Apple should guarantee support for X years, until the FCPX transition is done.

When Apple threw everything and started from scratch, it's a moment of vulnerability. Avid and Adobe will definitely make a play for the market. This is the risk of such a new piece of software.

There's sometimes a tone to the "professional editors object" tirades that makes me think some of them just don't like what many call "iMovie Pro" in a derisive way because it makes some things too easy, and makes a whole bunch of lumpen think they can be editors too, and that is something no Guild likes.

My perspective on that is, the revolution is going on whether you get to edit a new series about the Kardashians or not. Web streaming video, file video, is the new reality. Broadcast TV, cable, and all the reasons that industry was once a 'license to print money,' are a stale industry.

While I agree with MOST of your quote -- I think you are not getting the criticisms either. That "iMovie" interface, is great for SOME workflows -- but there are a lot of shops that are not going to be able to make money with the new FCPX as it stands. SOME, are definitely complaining about "something new that they don't understand." People invest in a way of doing things and don't want to have to re-learn an application they've used for years -- it's the VALUE of staying with an application.

>> And that "show all projects" view is a show-stopper for multi-client shops.

If Apple had more resources, they SHOULD have done an FCP8 and FCPX roll-out. Pull a few of the back-end things like multi-core, 64bit, and improve a few of the long-standing complaints to keep people happy. Of course, the number of hot-shot developers that would require -- I'm not sure of.

But personally, if I were Steve Jobs, I'd do it -- because the Movie industry is strategically important for Apple beyond the few dollars they bring in.

Another issue is that I can see where Apple is probably never going to be able to get FCPX to import FCP7 projects, but that certainly leaves the pros with some issues when FCP7 stops working and they can't open old projects anymore.

They can open FCP7 projects with FCPX, they can open FCPX projects with FCPX.
What's the problem?
No pro switches to a radically new architecture during a production.
So there's no problem.

SOME, are definitely complaining about "something new that they don't understand."

In the presentation video where they are showing off new features to a bunch of pros in the audience, the pros are all clapping and cheering and acting amazed when they showed a new audio waveform feature which I believe has been around in iMovie for years.

They can open FCP7 projects with FCPX, they can open FCPX projects with FCPX.
What's the problem?
No pro switches to a radically new architecture during a production.
So there's no problem.

I am confused by your post. Care to elaborate on how a FCP7 project is opened in FCPX?

I agree with the middle comment but many, many times a job has to be revisited down the line so opening a project in a newer edition of the software is normal after a back up. The newer version normally takes a while to update then you are set to go. If not it is backed up.

The last part is your opinion and you are entitled to it.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

I'm worried about the judgment of supposedly professional editors who didn't realize what's in this FAQ on their own. FCP7 is done. You can still use it, and Apple should guarantee support for X years, until the FCPX transition is done.

When Apple threw everything and started from scratch, it's a moment of vulnerability. Avid and Adobe will definitely make a play for the market. This is the risk of such a new piece of software.

There's sometimes a tone to the "professional editors object" tirades that makes me think some of them just don't like what many call "iMovie Pro" in a derisive way because it makes some things too easy, and makes a whole bunch of lumpen think they can be editors too, and that is something no Guild likes.

My perspective on that is, the revolution is going on whether you get to edit a new series about the Kardashians or not. Web streaming video, file video, is the new reality. Broadcast TV, cable, and all the reasons that industry was once a 'license to print money,' are a stale industry.

Got condescension much?

Just because some pundit (or a hundred) declares "something" is dead doesn't mean it is so. It's agreed everything regarding visual content delivery is changing. WE ALL KNOW THIS. However, change is rarely swift and sweeping. WEb streaming, file based workflows are the new reality and WE ALL KNOW THIS. Most pros are working in these new realities right now - along with the legacy stuff. And yes your comment about some high and mighty editors not liking the idea of the "lumpen" calling themselves editors is accurate, but it is several years too late. This has been happening for almost 20 years. FCP X is merely the latest in a long list new, different, empowering and affordable edit tools. You still have to know how to tell a story to be any good. Some Jake in his parents basement cutting clips in his underwear might be affordable, but it is unlikely he is any good.

This, from the Macworld review, is all you need to know... and why at some point in the future Avid and Adobe will have to rewrite their software, or get left in the dust by Apple again.

I can't and wont comment on the state of the art at Avid, but they do seem to be a bit more expensive, and YES... do cater to the traditional tape crowd, as well as a broadcast workflow.

So what's the belly-aching about? Get out your checkbooks and "upgrade" to an Avid station.
....

I think you are "GETTING IT" as far as where FCPX is going.

I figure that Apple is laying the groundwork for something like a desktop "FLAME", or "NITRO" or other real-time video creation station.

If you look at Motion -- I think you see where their paradigm is.

>> The "STRANGE" missing piece is the Preview on monitor support -- but that, along with the XML file system to me is pretty telling. There is NO EFFORT to waste time on anything that is not forward-looking in this product. Which is a pretty bold move.

So, if "I WERE CREATING A PERFECT EDITING SUITE" -- Id get rid of the old "cut and paste time-line" spreadsheet methodology. What you really WANT, is to have one big interface for your canvas and hot-keyed monitors for available video. INSTEAD of spending all your time cutting out the best performance from 20 takes, and then archiving reals based on where they should go in the movie -- you "audition" 20 takes at one time -- the BIG HINT, there is how "audio tracks" are syncing a clip. I suspect, that in the not to distant future, you can automatically scan for FACES, VOICES, and the "FX" like a CLAP BOARD and some key phrase like; "Scene 3, take 2" and THAT will create your automatic groupings for your project.

The TIMELINE is OLD -- and not really HOW we want to edit a video. You are either wanting to Manipulate or SEE related content to the scene you are manipulating, or you are jumping to some other point to manipulate and see. When you scroll across the time-line, that's really just a spreadsheet for the content you place on it. Sometimes it has thumbnails or names of the content -- sometimes, you might even label a "phrase" someone spoke. But I could imagine that you could "see through time" on multiple tracks, and "see the text" of what is said, like you were navigating "Time Machine" backups in reverse -- with some sort of onion-skinning.

>> I don't think that this latest FCPX will fully realize it's editing and navigating interface yet (with of course a HUD that you can customize) -- I just think that this is a stepping stone on the way to the future interface.

I figured, that the "face detection" and "text to speech" technologies would eventually catch up. It would be SO MUCH BETTER to have a script and have that match up to the timecode and then track to various points in various videos.

The XML file format, to me, hints at MORE INTEGRATION, so that the power of this, might be that someone in a web browser, could be helping clean up dailies or tag things on the project -- only the main editor, needs to deal with the hi-rez data. And it all magically syncs in the cloud. It seems like an oversight that Apple doesn't have the "save these files to this drive" as the default for all projects anymore -- but I've always wanted a "save here for this project" option myself.

With ThunderBolt -- the streaming of Previews and Cache files is going to get a lot quicker, with no need for the CPU to be involved in disk to disk transfers anymore. So, FCPX is moving towards "content based" file system, rather than a Drive/Folder based file system. But BEFORE that can work, it means that Terabytes are cheap, transfers are fast, and that you have something like "iCloud" to make sure that everything stays in sync.

>> MORE than the "real time" special effects, I think that MOST pro video shops are going to start having a "paradigm shift" to over-use a term, when the "content based" file system becomes ubiquitous.

Imagine all that FX, sound clips, clip content that you DON'T use right now, because it takes to much time to find and incorporate it, just "presented itself when and where it made sense." And imagine that you don't have to play ANYTHING from Twelve Hours of video, to have all the clips track the outline, or to find "speaker Bob Smith in Room Twelve on Day 4 of Convention 2009" ... you just have a file on Bob Smith, and every video clip he did EVER, is sortable, and you can view a quick preview or download a hi-rez version for finishing.

>> The CHANGES to workflow/production are going to be staggering once those types of capabilities become ubiquitous -- kind of like when we were first able to easily search for things on our hard drive. But it takes a LOT of infrastructure to make this work;
Face Recognition
Speech to Text that works
Voice recognition that identifies the speaker.
XML and a text-based file system to allow these different features to communicate.
Some sort of "cloud" infrastructure that allows editing, reviewing and grabbing files to be transparent.
True multi-threaded multi-core support that allows for networked computers to "pitch in" without getting in the way of dedicated work (Grand Central),
All image and sound manipulations to be processed in optimized engines that can take advantage of graphic cards or OTHER computing power (Open GL, Open GL, etc.)

>> My advice; if you don't have time to "learn" FCPX -- then don't buy it. Don't use it on something critical. But, if you are interested in much faster creative editing and more "content-aware" content control -- it makes sense to jump in.

In the presentation video where they are showing off new features to a bunch of pros in the audience, the pros are all clapping and cheering and acting amazed when they showed a new audio waveform feature which I believe has been around in iMovie for years.

Why is this a surprise. We've been talking about the Steve Jobs "reality distortion field" for years now

My guess, however, is that the speed and the WAY the data is displayed to the editor is what gathered excitement -- but I haven't looked at it that closely yet.

I think that with a "best effort" attempt Apple could provide a separate migration tool that took an FCP7 project and created a corresponding FCPX project:

You would think they could do it if they wanted to instead of basically saying it is impossible. After all, this is the company that brought us Rosetta and universal binaries to ease the transitions from two of their other major rewrites. And it couldn't be any more difficult than porting Safari, Quicktime and iTunes to Windows.

you would think they could do it if they wanted to instead of basically saying it is impossible. After all, this is the company that brought us rosetta and universal binaries to ease the transitions from two of their other major rewrites.

I figure that Apple is laying the groundwork for something like a desktop "FLAME", or "NITRO" or other real-time video creation station.

If you look at Motion -- I think you see where their paradigm is.

>> The "STRANGE" missing piece is the Preview on monitor support -- but that, along with the XML file system to me is pretty telling. There is NO EFFORT to waste time on anything that is not forward-looking in this product. Which is a pretty bold move.

So, if "I WERE CREATING A PERFECT EDITING SUITE" -- Id get rid of the old "cut and paste time-line" spreadsheet methodology. What you really WANT, is to have one big interface for your canvas and hot-keyed monitors for available video. INSTEAD of spending all your time cutting out the best performance from 20 takes, and then archiving reals based on where they should go in the movie -- you "audition" 20 takes at one time -- the BIG HINT, there is how "audio tracks" are syncing a clip. I suspect, that in the not to distant future, you can automatically scan for FACES, VOICES, and the "FX" like a CLAP BOARD and some key phrase like; "Scene 3, take 2" and THAT will create your automatic groupings for your project.

The TIMELINE is OLD -- and not really HOW we want to edit a video. You are either wanting to Manipulate or SEE related content to the scene you are manipulating, or you are jumping to some other point to manipulate and see. When you scroll across the time-line, that's really just a spreadsheet for the content you place on it. Sometimes it has thumbnails or names of the content -- sometimes, you might even label a "phrase" someone spoke. But I could imagine that you could "see through time" on multiple tracks, and "see the text" of what is said, like you were navigating "Time Machine" backups in reverse -- with some sort of onion-skinning.

>> I don't think that this latest FCPX will fully realize it's editing and navigating interface yet (with of course a HUD that you can customize) -- I just think that this is a stepping stone on the way to the future interface.

I figured, that the "face detection" and "text to speech" technologies would eventually catch up. It would be SO MUCH BETTER to have a script and have that match up to the timecode and then track to various points in various videos.

The XML file format, to me, hints at MORE INTEGRATION, so that the power of this, might be that someone in a web browser, could be helping clean up dailies or tag things on the project -- only the main editor, needs to deal with the hi-rez data. And it all magically syncs in the cloud. It seems like an oversight that Apple doesn't have the "save these files to this drive" as the default for all projects anymore -- but I've always wanted a "save here for this project" option myself.

With ThunderBolt -- the streaming of Previews and Cache files is going to get a lot quicker, with no need for the CPU to be involved in disk to disk transfers anymore. So, FCPX is moving towards "content based" file system, rather than a Drive/Folder based file system. But BEFORE that can work, it means that Terabytes are cheap, transfers are fast, and that you have something like "iCloud" to make sure that everything stays in sync.

>> MORE than the "real time" special effects, I think that MOST pro video shops are going to start having a "paradigm shift" to over-use a term, when the "content based" file system becomes ubiquitous.

Imagine all that FX, sound clips, clip content that you DON'T use right now, because it takes to much time to find and incorporate it, just "presented itself when and where it made sense." And imagine that you don't have to play ANYTHING from Twelve Hours of video, to have all the clips track the outline, or to find "speaker Bob Smith in Room Twelve on Day 4 of Convention 2009" ... you just have a file on Bob Smith, and every video clip he did EVER, is sortable, and you can view a quick preview or download a hi-rez version for finishing.

>> The CHANGES to workflow/production are going to be staggering once those types of capabilities become ubiquitous -- kind of like when we were first able to easily search for things on our hard drive. But it takes a LOT of infrastructure to make this work;
Face Recognition
Speech to Text that works
Voice recognition that identifies the speaker.
XML and a text-based file system to allow these different features to communicate.
Some sort of "cloud" infrastructure that allows editing, reviewing and grabbing files to be transparent.
True multi-threaded multi-core support that allows for networked computers to "pitch in" without getting in the way of dedicated work (Grand Central),
All image and sound manipulations to be processed in optimized engines that can take advantage of graphic cards or OTHER computing power (Open GL, Open GL, etc.)

>> My advice; if you don't have time to "learn" FCPX -- then don't buy it. Don't use it on something critical. But, if you are interested in much faster creative editing and more "content-aware" content control -- it makes sense to jump in.

+++ What an amazing post!

"Swift generally gets you to the right way much quicker." - auxio -

"The perfect [birth]day -- A little playtime, a good poop, and a long nap." - Tomato Greeting Cards -

"You can also import your media files from previous versions into Final Cut Pro X."

As long as it's not on a NAS of course. It's nice to know that it imports media though, that's the least you'd expect from a video editing package so I guess my mxf files that FCP 7 imported will load in just fine:

Final Cut Pro X includes an all-new project architecture structured around a trackless timeline and connected clips. In addition, Final Cut Pro X features new and redesigned audio effects, video effects, and color grading tools. Because of these changes, there is no way to “translate” or bring in old projects without changing or losing data.

Phew, no chance of partial data loss when we have complete data loss. To think I might have had the hassle of reapplying a colour correction or two. All I have to do now is rebuild the entire timeline.

Quote:

Final Cut Pro X offers some basic support with automatic clip synchronization, which allows you to sync multiple video and audio clips using audio waveforms, creating a Compound Clip that can be used for simple multicam workflows.

A big part of this is the actual editing part, not the clip sync.

Quote:

Yes. You can hide Events in Final Cut Pro X by moving them out of the Final Cut Events folder.

No.

How about a 'show only selected events' button or allow events to be tagged with projects and have a dropdown that shows all or individual projects?

Quote:

We have already worked with Automatic Duck to allow you to export OMF and AAF from Final Cut Pro X using Automatic Duck Pro Export FCP 5.0.

Yeah, thing about that is, nobody really wants to have to spend $500 for a feature that will be free in a few weeks and the fact Apple helped them out kinda rubs salt in the wounds a bit.

Quote:

Does Final Cut Pro X allow you to assign audio tracks for export?

Not yet. An update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize your audio clips by type and export them directly from Final Cut Pro X.

As long as it can go back and forth between Pro Tools without losing any data or connections. I anticipate lots of fun with this.

Quote:

Can I customize my export settings?

Yes. Compressor 4, available from the Mac App Store for $49.99

The frequently asked question is 'can I customise my export settings from Final Cut Pro X' to which the answer is no. I can do it in $30 Quicktime Pro but not $300 Final Cut Pro. Compressor is a batch compressor, there's no reason to run every single export through it to be able to use format presets that any app has access to via Quicktime (unless they break this in Lion too of course).

Quote:

Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, and Compressor 4 Commercial and Education Volume Licensing will be available soon via the Apple Online Store for quantities of 20 or more.

So people who want 15 seats just have to do what? Install using 15 individual accounts?

It's nice that they put up the FAQ but the answers need some more work.

Unlike "fearless" (what an oxymoron) I'm not afraid of the fact my job can be done by more and more people. You should keep your job because you know how to make a good video, not due to having made a huge investment in technology and "training" to keep the masses out.

Tape acquisition and tape delivery are utterly separate questions, and the networks have not yet joined the dots. They won't be swayed just because Apple announces "the way of the future".
They will eventually go there, and we won't be buying a new HDCAM SR deck anytime soon. But we've been saying that for five years and they still want tape.

It's all well and good to go shooting with your 5D or EX and imagine your show will never see tape. It will, if it's going anywhere other than a DVD or Blu-ray (hang on, aren't they dead too?) or the web. So what exactly are you paid to make? Vimeo vids? Skating on YouTube? There's money in that that beats network television deals? Show me!